The hills of Arlington Cemetery are covered with crosses, Stars of David and other symbols showing where fallen soldiers lie. These symbols are found all around the world, from the shores of Normandy to the hills of the Philippines. Wherever American service members have fought and died they have sought not just to bury their dead, but to commemorate them.

The veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have been no different. Ten years ago Marines put two 13-foot crosses on their backs and carried them up to a remote hilltop on the grounds of Camp Pendleton, a military base outside San Diego. They set up the crosses on the hill as a place to remember and to grieve for their fallen brothers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The grounds around the crosses are now covered with personal items of remembrance like family photos and dog tags.

But in a heartless move, two hypersecularist groups – the Military Association of Atheists & Freethinkers, and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation – are now threatening to sue if the U.S. Marine Corps refuses to take down the crosses. They say the crosses establish a religion and they want to see the crosses put into “a private church.”

The Marines who set up the crosses say they aren’t establishing a religion, but a place of remembrance. As the widow of one of the Marines who set up the crosses – who was since killed in action – says, the crosses are “a place for the Marines to grieve and to grow.”

Fortunately the Constitution is on the side of these Marine families. Courts have held time and again that government does not violate the Establishment Clause of the Constitution when it uses religious symbols in commemoration – just like those crosses and Stars of David in the cemeteries in Arlington and elsewhere. Remembering our dead does not create a state religion, it is a basic human impulse expressed in traditional cultural forms.

In fact, the Marines’ memorial has even more protection under the Constitution. It’s not a government department that set up these crosses – it was individual Marines remembering individual sacrifices. Those Marines have freedom of speech; the same freedom of speech their brothers fought and died for. Just as people set up roadside crosses at the scene of a highway accident, the Marines can set up these crosses to honor their dead. And most governments have the good sense not to try and suppress the natural human instinct to commemorate those who have died.

Unfortunately, that won’t be enough for the hypersecularists. They believe they have a right to freedom from religion, a right not to see other people express their beliefs in public; in short, a right to silence others. And never mind the separation of church and state – these groups want to separate all traces of religion from public life.

Indeed, these groups seem oblivious that they are attacking a deeply human instinct: to commemorate the dead in accordance with one’s beliefs, and not as mandated by any outside party – not the government, not the easily offended bystander, and definitely not by a group like the falsely named Military Religious Freedom Foundation.

That is why the Supreme Court should step in and declare, once and for all, that crosses commemorating fallen soldiers do not violate the Constitution by creating an official state church. The court will have an opportunity to do that next fall, when it could hear another cross case from San Diego. The ACLU has spent two decades trying to get the Mount Soledad Veterans Memorial Cross in La Jolla torn down. Last year, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed and said the cross had to be removed. The Supreme Court is now deciding whether to take up the case, which both veterans’ groups and the Obama administration have asked it to do.

The last time the court heard a cross case, it allowed a 75-year-old cross to continue standing in the Mojave Desert as a veterans’ memorial. This time it should take up the Mount Soledad case and issue a ruling that protects all crosses of remembrance.

Accordingly, all Americans should recognize that the best way to honor our Marines’ sacrifices is to honor the freedoms they have fought and died for.

Rassbach, a California resident, is the deputy general counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a Washington D.C.- based public interest law firm that defends religious liberty for people of all faiths.